Tag: Javier Milei

Double Milei

photog Current Events , ,

I read (or heard) that Donald Trump was talking about getting input from Elon Musk on streamlining or pruning the federal government.  Now why Elon Musk would be a qualified individual for such an endeavor is far from clear to me.  It is true that he reduced the headcount at Twitter by something like 70-80% after he bought it but since the social media platform is mostly an automated business, he probably just asked his direct reports to terminate everyone who couldn’t code.  End of story.

But all of this brings up a good point.  Why does the federal government employ millions of people to do clerical work?  Just as banks and insurance companies shed millions of paper-pushing positions when they eliminated the paper, shouldn’t the various departments, bureaus and agencies do the same?  And how about the fact that it seems there are multiple agencies working on the same “problems.”  For instance:

The Administration for Native Americans (ANA)

Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA)

Or how about:

The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB)

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF)

And finally:

The Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

The Office of Environmental Management (no acronym!)

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

The Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission (OSHRC)

 

How much you want to bet that you have to get all these agencies placated before you can get anything done that they have staked out as their turf?

I think Donald Trump is absolutely correct that streamlining the federal government (or more felicitously expressed, “taking a chainsaw to it”) is one of the greatest public services that any president could perform for this country.  He has my whole-hearted support in such an endeavor.  But will he be able to do it?  Didn’t the Obama administration distribute tanks and automatic weapons to everybody from the IRS to the post office?  I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that some IRS guys would go postal after being fired.  But the real trick will be performing surgery on the FBI and the other intelligence agencies.  Those guys are vicious.  And that’s not mentioning the CIA.  After all most people think they actually did kill Kennedy and all he did was abort the Bay of Pigs fiasco.  Imagine what they’ll do if you try to take the food out of their mouths.  They’d probably break out a suitcase nuke.

But almost as much fun as firing everyone, would be to impose an across the board 25% reduction in pay for the whole federal bureaucracy (except the armed forces).  For the armed forces the trick would be a reduction in the number of generals by a factor of five.  That should keep them out of trouble.

Trump is definitely onto something.  And the idea of enlisting actual businessmen to help identify the dead wood in the federal government is a good idea.  Bloated bureaucracy has been the cause of over taxation and inefficiency since the Han dynasty ruled China.  I would guess that reducing the size of the federal government by 10% would balance the budget immediately.

Now granted these fired individuals would be mostly permanently unemployed.  They would initially cause a burden on our economy.  Basically, they would have no usable skills and no work ethic.  But this would eventually come off the books as they quickly starved to death.  And after all these government departments were neutered the rest of the American workforce would surge forward in productivity, no longer hampered by the stupidity and malevolence of the vast government bureaucracy.

On second thought, Trump should consult with Javier Milei.  If it worked in Argentina, it should work twice as well here.  Just double whatever he did.

Plan B

photog Current Events , , ,

President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador declares martial law and arrests tens of thousands of gang members.  In Argentina President Javier Milei is taking “a chain saw” to the bloated federal bureaucracy both to reduce the budget deficit and inflation and to scale back the over-regulation of life in his country.

Why do I see these actions as significant?  Because both of these countries are poster children for the abuses that their present leaders are trying to address.

El Salvador has been struggling with violence for many decades.  After a thirteen-year civil war gangs ran wild over the countryside and the murder rate was astronomically high.  Bukele has cut the murder rate by at least 50%.  As draconian as the method he used to accomplish this clean-up was, the people support his results.

In Argentina rampant hyperinflation has been going on for decades.  Milei ran on the promise that he would fix the economy.  And the people of Argentina elected him because at this point no one else has spoken the truth about why their country which has so much potential is an economic basket case.

Latin America is supposed to be hopelessly corrupt and unfixable.  Well, maybe things can change.  When the basket cases of the world start getting their acts together, maybe something is happening to the old world.  Maybe there is even a little hope.

It’s certainly true that some of these actions aren’t particularly legal.  Bukele used martial law and unconstitutional powers to arrest the gangs.  There is talk that many innocent men were swept up in this dragnet.  Well, maybe what we are looking at is the rise of the strongman.  Could this lead to dictatorship?  Maybe.  But when democracy fails you spectacularly you have to try something.  You go to Plan B.

And what does this tell me about the world at large and the United States in particular?  It may mean that results are beginning to outweigh lofty ideals and good intentions in the minds of the people.  After all that is sort of how Donald Trump and Brexit got their victories.  People want results and they want the truth.  Both of these seem to be in very short supply from the politicians and bureaucrats that rule in the Western democracies.  Now, the United States isn’t as chaotically lawless as El Salvador was nor as economically mismanaged as Argentina.  But we’re headed in those directions at a brisk clip.  Maybe a sea change is in the cards.

And maybe it won’t be that long.  2024 will be an important election.  If Trump gets elected there’s still a small chance, he can purge the bureaucracy of its deep state cronies in order to restore control over the government to the duly elected officials.  But if Kamala Harris is installed in the White House, then we can say definitively that United States is no longer a functional republic but rather an oligarchic junta that cares almost nothing for the welfare of the people.

If Harris is running this country, even as a puppet of the oligarchy, I assume the country will suffer a catastrophic decline with rampant violence and economic and fiscal instability at a level that will spark essentially a popular upheaval.  And regardless of how it is clothed in constitutional language, there will be revolutionary changes in how things get done.

Of course, I could be completely wrong and Kamala could turn out to be a wise and effective ruler who turns her term into a golden age.  But after enough yellow school bus speeches and other brilliant clap-trap, I kind of doubt it.

We seem to be speeding toward destiny.

Ain’t it Revolting

photog Current Events , , , ,

I’m back, I’m back.  I was held ransom by the forces of darkness that lay claim to my soul here in this hellish corner of New England.  Dunwich is a desolate quagmire of unspeakable infamy.  Here I must traffic in the few remaining grains of sand in my hour glass in return for worthless ducats that cannot be exchanged for anything meaningful, like a breeding group of tuataras or Komodo dragons.  Ah well.

So the news feeds are all full of various pundits on the Left, Right and middle buzzing about the latest crop of foreign right-wing parties and leaders who have broken through and made it to the mainstream.  Geert Wilders in the Netherlands and Javier Milei in Argentina are the latest additions to eruptions in Sweden, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Slovakia and Hungary.  And other countries are threatening to continue this change.  Both France and Germany have growing right-wing parties and there is talk that in the next French presidential election Marine Le Pen may finally win.

So, does any of this indicate a turning of the tide?  Well, it seems to indicate that the ceaseless migration of third world people has finally worn out even the endless patience and tolerance of Swedes and Germans.  Maybe at last these Europeans are ready to end their invasion by people who do not share their values and refuse to assimilate their host country’s manners and identity.

Is it too late to reverse the deterioration of culture and lifestyle that these invaders have caused?  In the case of France, it might be.  There are no-go zones in and around Paris that no longer respond to police authority.  Trying to reassert sovereignty in those areas will require military action similar to what’s currently going on in Gaza.  I tend to doubt that the French are up to the challenge.

But some of the other countries where the invaders are far less entrenched may be able to claw back their homes.  A place like Hungary where they never let the problem take root can be a resource for the type of immigration program that protects the indigenous population from immigration-based suicide.  We’ll see.

Does any of this presage the same type of political change in the United States?  Actually, no.  We had our moment in 2016.  All the pressure that the citizens of this country could bring to bear was expended in the elections in 2016 and 2020.  But the administrative state in concert with the Democrats in the swing states successfully used fraudulent election practices like ballot harvesting to steal the 2020 election.  And since then, they’ve “fortified Democracy” (enshrined voter fraud) in those states to prevent the indigenous citizens of this country from electing the government they need to protect them.  At this point I’d be more than a little surprised if any honest federal elections occur anywhere that has large Democrat run cities.  The prospect of the 3 am shutdown of the polling places followed by the three days of steadily pro=Democrat returns is a little hard to watch so until I’m proven wrong, I’ll assume we won’t have the luxury of stopping illegal immigration anytime in the foreseeable future.

Nevertheless, I’m quite encouraged by the right-wing revolts going on in Europe and elsewhere around the world.  I think they indicate that there is still at least some life left in the West.  And watching these parties growing and waking up more and more of the people in these countries is at least a starting point for some kind of a reaction to the woke ideology that until now has gone completely unchecked.

Keep it coming.

Tucker Interviews Argentina’s Milei

photog Current Events ,

Milei is believed to be favored to win the Argentinian presidency next month.  Why is this interesting?  Because Milei is a libertarian economist and an enemy of the Left.  Argentina is an economic basket case with hyperinflation and a socialist government that guarantees that things will never get better.  But maybe things have become so dysfunctional that even the cradle to grave socialists know that something has to change.

Leave it to Tucker to find someone interesting to talk to.  This guy even has a Trump-like haircut!  It’s a half hour long so there is that.  What I find interesting is that revolt against the Left is springing up in multiple places at once.  Maybe it’s a case of when things can’t go on, they won’t go on.  Or maybe this is just the death rattle of freedom.